Good watching. It’s even shown how the core drilling from trees is done and how lake sediments are drilled. Also, the environment of the lake Korttajärvi is shown, fields are sloping deeply to the lake shore, no wonder the lake sediments are disturbed due human activities, or what was the nice scientific term used.

A very nice summary of why I don’t believe in catastrophic AGW, having followed this and other ‘sceptic’ sites for several years.
Several points summarised here highlight the difficulty I have in convincing others – it is just TOO ridiculous!
Used proxies upside-down….preselected hockey-stick proxies because they give the expected result…’adjusted’ historical measured temeratures down and modern ones up…concealed and/or ‘lost’ data…etc, etc.
All this from the world’s most eminent climate scientists and scientific bodies; and governments would obviously not commit trillions of dollars if it really was so transparently ‘fixed’.
You just can’t say this stuff without sounding like a lunatic conspiracy theorist!

Pity MOT used the earlier uncorrected version of Steve’s Yamal RCS chronologies instead of this one. Not that it makes any difference to the conclusions; it’s a nice example of Steve’s integrity, and a demonstration of how Science should proceed – mistakes are OK and perfectly normal, IF they are admitted and corrected.

The show transcript reads just like 60 Minutes. You can bet that if this were, say, Big Pharma and they were cherry-picking data and/or using it upside down then ABCNBCCBSPBS would be all over it like a cheap suit.

Great interview with Steve. We are fortunate that Steve decided to deconstruct the hockey stick several years ago. Without his perseverance, the stick might still be used as the icon it was when initially published.

Thanks for all the compliments. ianl888: The ratings were good: about 510 000 viewers, which translates to a 25 percent market share. Feedback: unfortunately we don’t have the time to publish a version with Swedish subtitles. But hopefully we’ll get to do a version with English subtitles and voiceover, if there is real demand from abroad.

Re: Matti Virtanen (#25), Surely its worth an English voiceover. I also believe that this is far better than the recent “Not Evil, Just Wrong” which, in my opinion, tried to cover too much. In any event, congratulations.

BTW I have also sent an e-mail to the Norwegian popular science TV-magazine “Scrhødingers katt” and suggested that they show the program. Maybe others could do this as well. I mean, not only in my country.

As I understand it, Roy Spencer has some issues with Lindzen’s latest paper about feedback, so that part requires some caution; it’s still being hashed out. The rest of it, however, seems like a good summary of the highlights of the disputes.

The transcript is one of the most coherent discussions of a scientific topic perhaps ever to hit TV. Hat tip to the Finns for allowing such cogent analysis to hit the air, without sensationalism and without dragging it out like on Nat Geo shows and padding with pictures.

In this case there might be. The makers of this film are already under fire for revealing that the finnish prime minister had taken bribes. It was just one more revelation in the long list of corruption scandals that are currently ravaging the country. But unlike other cases, the full might of the party PR-machinery managed to spin the case so that the show was the one that ended up taking the heat.

I wouldn’t be surprised is this episode would be used as an excuse to silence a political critic and force the network to cancel the show.

Has there been too much attention given the program already? The video media is no longer available on the net?
I’ll second the suggestion for Schrödinger’s Cat to air it in Norway, let us see if they dare (or are allowed to do it).

Also from a machine translation of the Finnish Meteorological Institute response:

“Carbon dioxide by itself raise the temperature of half or one degree. But that’s not the whole truth. 2,5-6,0 degrees warming, calculated the positive feedback efektioita, covering areas such as water vapor and snow and ice disappear. Only through them achieve a stronger warming. Dioxide trigger other processes, however, is the whole cause of climate change. “

Interesting that the gent from FMI didn’t actually audit the show. Linden’s 0.5 C feedback estimate on a CO2 doubling stems from his claim to have experimentally measured negative feedback. The Lindzen-Choi paper is hugely important if true and deserves a post of its own here. It’s apparently controversial, and deserves an audit ;)

Re: Kasmir (#37),
AGW proponents (& the populist “meeja”) are running a million miles from Lindzen & Choi 2009. From their viewpoint, it doesn’t exist

I don’t know the validity of Lindzen & Choi 2009, but my experience says that if the AGW proponents call it “irresponsible” then they are terrified that it may contain some real accuracy (although Roy Spencer certainly doesn’t think so)

Given the stakes here now, I expect we will not be enlightened any time soon. And I simply cannot trust RC

I spent some time with Lindzen and Choi in Erice and was planning to some posts on this before the Yamal and Kaufman things came up – topics that are related to my areas that I specialize in. While I think that Lindzen and Choi are important and interesting, I’m not in a position to do a detailed analysis of their results. There are hundreds of climate scientists and I presume that some of them will analyze their findings.

See Lubos’ post on that from about a week ago. He has some serious doubts, and he’s certainly no alarmist. Spencer has critiqued it, so I’d say that this one is still far from settled. And the nature of the dispute seemed pretty basic. It seemed strange that Lindzen could make such a simple error. Anyway, stay tuned.

Re: Calvin Ball (#40)
I am not sure it was simply an error. It appeared to stem from the type of climate model that Linzden used for his comparison and Linzden may have good reasons for the choice. I hope he clarifies.

Re: Steve McIntyre (#39),
Roy W. Spencer, who I think is an AGW skeptic has analyzed their work and come up with an uncertain conclusion – see link below. He also makes the same comment that it’s up to other climate scientists to take a serious look at their work and make comments.

As I said above, I haven’t personally considered the data and do not have an opinion on the matter. I’d prefer that readers hold off expressing opinions on this study until such time as I’ve familiarized myself with the topic or until someone more familiar than I with the issues can moderate the topic.

Matti Virtanen, I don’t know how to say, “Thank you” strongly enough for creating this documentary. It is a wonderful antidote to the suffocating alarmist hysteria that one hears on a daily basis in the main stream media.

Re: Jean S (#49),
Thanks for the subtitles. Perhaps you can also explain something which puzzled me in the original Finnish: the hockey stick is sometimes an icehockey stick (jääkiekkomaila/lätkämaila) and sometimes just a hockey stick (kiekkomaila). Is there some logic behind this choice? A subtle linguistic joke perhaps?

I found the programme generally very clear, but one section was less clear. The Korttajärvi data graphs showed x-ray density but did not actually make clear that both graphs showed higher temperature at the top. This has led to some confusion, and may continue to do so. There is a blog comment for example at http://blogit.yle.fi/mot/ilmastonmuutoksen-syvin-idea, from Vainikka:

This suggests that the Korttajärvi data was not actually inverted because both graph and numbers were inverted together, so confusing x-ray density (the numbers shown) with temperature (not shown). As I did not find any answer pointing this out in 8 comment pages, I have submitted a comment:

The x-ray density (inverted) graph has been ‘inverted’ by Mann, but so to has the vertical scale; forgive my statistical shortcoming (and any impression I want to give the hockeystick any support) but doesn’t that mean that the intrinsic values have been preserved?

Steve: No. It was used upside down. It’s been explained over and over. Why don’t you ask Mann to acknowledge this??

This suggests that the Korttajärvi data was not actually inverted because both graph and numbers were inverted together

How on earth do you determine if the data were inverted based on the presentation of a graph? Smarten up. You have to examine the output of the code that makes use of the data to determine how it gets used. Read the blog.

Steve: Actually they start in October 2008 – see the It’s Saturday Night Live post. In case people have lost the Saturday Night segue, this post was written close to the peak of the Tina Fey-Sarah Palin thing. You could make a pretty good skit on a paleoclimatologist using upside down proxies – the guy on the Apple commercials from the Jon Stewart show would be good at it.

Thanks John M; I think I’ve got it; Mann did a double or reverse flip so that the data and the scale were flipped in opposite directions.

Steve: I’m not sure that your explanation is particularly perspicacious, but if it helps you, that’s good. The point was explained clearly in the posts and is very simple. Lots of people have understood it easily, though close Team associates have complicated matters by refusing to acknowledge it and muddying the waters. As Gavin Schmidt says, it would be better if authors corrected their errors, but unfortunately this hasn’t happened in this case and even the Comment-Reply process at PNAS did not elicit a settlement of a highly trivial point.

Re: cohenite (#63),
You think you’ve got it? I guarantee that if you don’t read the blog you won’t get it. You have to understand how Mann’s algorithm works to understand how the business end gets flipped.

But it’s also important to emphasize that in physical reality the blade of the stick has nothing to do with temperature and this was pointed out by the original authors. Therefore, even if the original authors had been mistaken about the theory of what the varve measurements meant in past centuries, in this last century or so the measurements were not caused by temperature and therefore any measurements during this time period should be eliminated before the larger record is put to any use for paleoclimatology.

Well following bender’s advice let’s see if I can be more perspicacious; inverting both the scale and the meaning of the data would leave things unchanged; however what Mann did was to invert the scale and change the meaning of the data; that is, the proxies for warm were changed or misinterpreted by Mann to be cold and vice-versa for the cold proxies. So instead of the low x-ray density corresponding to warm Mann now shows that low density shows cold and so on. It’s pretty glaring when it clicks which makes it astounding that Mann will not fess up.

Re: cohenite (#66),
No, you don’t get it. It is obvious you still haven’t read a thing. Did you bother reading “Conolley endorses upside down Mann”, for example? It took Connolley and his minions several days for them to understand what was happening with this perverse proxy in Mann’s artesanal algorithm.

It’s not just the upside-down-ness of Tiljander. In any process when you have an error of this type, you can’t just exclude the data and drive on. You have to ask how did the algorithm get so mixed up.

The point of the upsidedown-ness which has sort of been overlooked because of disinformation from Connolley and so on is that it proved for those that have eyes to see that the Mannian algorithm was simply mining for correlations without regard to whether they had any meaning. In this case, there was a spurious correlation to ditchbuilding and bridges; the Mannian algorithm mined for this correlation.

Jeff Id has been writing colorfully and well on this topic – he’s still relatively new to the craziness and has some of the freshness that I used to have.

The thing can’t be “fixed” by simply excluding upside-down Tiljander. The Mannomatic just mines for the next thing. “The” problem goes right back to the Mannomatic itself.

Re: Steve McIntyre (#68),
Yes. I don’t want to sound dismissive. I want people to read to see for themselves that the problem runs pretty deep. It’s not like somebody forgot to multiply a data column by -1, or accidentally inverted the scale on a graphic in a paper. The authors got fooled by a spurious correlation, and this happened to have a bizarre knock-on effect that they could not imagine. How did they miss it? Because a good “proxy” does not change sense as you move from the calibration period to reconstruction period. It would be like my thermometer working one way on the day I bought it, but then in the opposite sense once the warranty had expired. Thermometers don’t do that! You hope …

the Mannian algorithm was simply mining for correlations without regard to whether they had any meaning.

Surely, but that should be the responsibility of the person behind the data mining, who checks about the physical meaning of the data and their suitability to be fed to the software. One would think that a thorough reading of the original articles of the data collectors, understanding of what proxy the data were intended for and such “minuscules” should be done first and very carefully. Otherwise it is “just feeding the data scrapped somewhere on the internet”? ;-)

This suggests that the Korttajärvi data was not actually inverted because both graph and numbers were inverted together

How on earth do you determine if the data were inverted based on the presentation of a graph? Smarten up. You have to examine the output of the code that makes use of the data to determine how it gets used. Read the blog.

Apologies of causing further confusion in #55 by mixing languages. It was the Finnish quote just above which suggested …

… Yes, the curve is the other way around, but so are the numbers. Generally graphs are drawn so that higher numbers are at the top of the figure. The figure is different but the information is exactly the same i.e. undistorted.

And my short comment in Finnish below, which I asked Jean S to consider correcting if my Finnish had proved inadequate, is:

But the numbers are the X-ray density, not temperature. In both images, higher temperatures are at the top of the figure, so the information is not “exactly the same,” as you write, but is completely distorted.

And I have read the blog, and am aware of further aspects of this. There are severe limitations on in depth treatment in a short programme, but I thought that presentation of this point was a weak point in the programme, and allowed viewers to become confused because the X-ray density shown in both figures does suggest an inversion of “graph and numbers together”, drawing attention away from the fact that both are supposed to represent temperature reconstructions based on the same data.

There are severe limitations on in depth treatment in a short programme, but I thought that presentation of this point was a weak point in the programme

Again I ask: what would you have shown in a video? The code of the Mannomatic? A guy failing to check 1209 outputs to see if they made sense? The video is an invitation to dig deeper. If you do, you will see that, yes, in fact the data were used inappropriately. And it doesn’t stop (or start) there …

There are severe limitations on in depth treatment in a short programme, but I thought that presentation of this point was a weak point in the programme

Again I ask: what would you have shown in a video?

(With all the obvious benefits of hindsight) I (hope) I would have:

(1) Added an indicative high/low temperature anomaly scale alongside the X-ray density scale to the figure shown in the programme and described in the English transcript as “millennial temperature reconstruction from Korttajärvi done by the Finns”, and added a footnote explaining that the paper did not include an explicit temperature scale, but did indicate than X-ray density changes should be interpreted as temperature changes, up and down, in the manner shown in the figure.

(2) Matched the temperature anomaly scale for tiljander_2003_xraydenseave from Figure S9 in Mann’s original SI (this is still graphed in the updated SI, but, at least on my screen, is hard to find as the coloured key entry is almost invisible, and the graphed data needs to be located by a process of elimination). Added this alongside the X-ray density scale to the figure shown in the programme and described in the English transcript as “the same data presented by the hockey team”

I would not have tried to discuss any issues of code (I’m near the end of STEP3 in porting GISTEMP to a single unified application in a modern language, with considerable additional output for analysis, and the basic output verified against the NASA intermediate files – I know only too well what lies within the code produced by some of these people, and would not wish to inflict any such torture on the unwary. There be dragons, interesting dragons perhaps, but dragons nonetheless).
As you say, read the blog …

I tried to watch the programme from the point of view of someone to whom all this is new, which I believe was the target audience. (Even if I did get sidetracked a little counting hockey vs ice-hockey sticks). Preaching to the converted would not be a priority. Unless such a person can see immediately within the few seconds available to make the particular point that the data has been subjected to gross abuse, that person will very likely not be motivated to dig deeper on this topic, and it may well stop there. How the data got used is for later.
So, having concentrated on making one initial point strongly by also showing it clearly in the associated graphics, I would hope that they would then take up the invitation to dig deeper, first by reviewing the program transcript (the “Käsikirjoitus” button is the same transcript in Finnish), then by reading the blog, for which I would have provided links on this topic, as I think it is a topic where the less mathematically inclined have a better chance of understanding at least some of the issues involved. Whereas issues such as cohort structure (not here criticising the mention of this in the program, just taking it as an example) or even sample size may be less accessible.

Overall, I believe that a strength of the programme was that it covered a limited range of topics at a reasonable and accessible depth and in plain language, rather than falling into the trap of bewildering the audience by trying to cover too much, or by over-detailed presentation. I just felt that a weak point was that these two figures as presented ran too great a risk of dismissal as a trivial difference in presentation. The second scale, particularly when the figures could be viewed later at leisure in the transcript, could have made the difference in interpretation of X-ray density as temperature proxy more immediately obvious.

Hope this makes my point of view clearer.

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As “taman_viikon_mot” translates as “This week’s MOT”, these links will presumably move shortly to the “Viime viikon MOT” (Last week’s MOT) section, and then to the archive. I’ve pasted these links “as is” below for anyone who may later wish to see what was linked without having to navigate the archive by guesswork. Try Google translation or just follow the links. (Steve, please snip this whole paragraph and the links if you feel it may infringe the YLE copyright agreements that Matti Virtanen referred to at http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=7650#comment-365158, although I would understood that post as referring to the actual programme productions rather than such ancillary items):

Finnish dendro has pitched in at lustiag. Unfortunately no english version is available. The post at lustiag is not signed, but the host of the site is Mauri Timonen. Here are couple extracts, please excuse my english, especially when it comes to technical words (my dictionary didn’t have all the words, so some of them are just from the top of my head):

The Jamal chronology is one with exceptionally good quality. The number of transitions and natural deviations, the propertys that describe it’s quality, are close to zero (4) and the correlation between the series is exceptionally high (0.771). That is why it works as an excellent chronology for dating purposes. On the other hand, when considering the interpretation of climate, one runs in to all kind of troubles.

In the case of Jamal, judging from the fact that different combinations of data results in a clear divergence, the problem may be of validity. Small amount of anual observations and the large deviation (coefficient of variation is approximately 45%) of the index also points to a reliability problems.

The coefficient of variation for the last 1000 years in the index of Jamal chronology is approximately 45%, which would require up to 80 samples for each year, when aiming for accuracy of 10%. If the number of samples is in the range of 10-20, like in Jamal, the accuracy of the estimate is something like +- 20-30%. It is way too low, when correlating temperatures to ringwidh estimates.

In the case of Jamal, the climate interpretation is further complicated by the rise of the average age calculated by calendar years, from about 75 to 250 through last century. If one would try to apply, for example, 70-110 year age band, there would be no measurements left for the last century, because all the trees would be more than 110 years old.

The wide critic of the Jamal case, that has been discussed all over the internet, is a great learning experience for all working in this field. However, in a case that adresses the methods and criterias of a whole field of science (dendro), I feel that the citisism towards Briffa has been unreasonable.

So, haven’t heard of any dendro, that would stand behind Briffas dirty dozen, but at least someone sort of breaked the silence.

The original URL says “taman viikon mot” (mot of this week), and the new URL says “viime viikon mot” (mot of last week)… ;) I’ll update (again) the link to the post when they’ll have the permanent URL published (should be after this week).

I watched the Finnish video. I have also read two books on global warming: Unstoppable Global Warming & The Politically Incorrect Guide To Global Warming. As a side note, shouldn’t those titles now be changed to be “Climate Change” instead of “Global Warming”? :-)
I am not a scientist but I was taken with Professor Lindzen’s reliance on nature instead of computer models. To me, computers have always been nothing more than rapid morons. So I was wondering if doing something as simple as checking the world’s tidal charts would, in any way, prove or disprove whether or not the arctic/antarctic ice was melting and causing seas to rise?

MOT’s reporter Martti Backman has made several climate skeptical tv documentaries since 1997. One of the more recent ones is MOT: Cooling in the greenhouse (2008) which includes interviews with Roy Spencer and John Christy. You can watch the program for free: